Fall River cafe owner helping downtown blossom. New restaurants and stores are coming.

FALL RIVER — With some care and collaboration, a corner of Fall River’s downtown is starting to flower.

“I’ve really been focusing on bringing in new entrepreneurs into Fall River with a focus on job creation,” said Joseph Holdiman, owner of Thyme Blossom.

His restaurant and cafe has been thriving at 10 Purchase St., serving coffee, breakfast, lunch and baked goodies. But in the last few years Holdiman has taken on the role of mentor for small-business owners and begun to revitalize his corner of downtown in a way he hopes spreads.

Holdiman owns the Buffington Building at 10 Purchase and its neighbor, the former Fall River Cooperative Bank building at 30 Bedford St. He rents space and provides incubator space for up-and-coming businesses that complement what he’s doing at Thyme Blossom, giving their owners mentorship, equipment and a place to grow — with a focus on people who are from marginalized communities, including BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities or people who were raised below the poverty line.

“It’s about bringing in talent that most people overlook and giving them a shot here in Fall River — which is really the basis of what Fall River is," he said.

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Holdiman bought the Buffington Building in November 2016, opening Thyme Blossom just under three years later. His role as an entrepreneurship mentor is much more recent.

In 2021, he began working with his first mentee, Lisa Petrizzi-Geller of POP Culture, who makes custom confections like cake pops, cookies, cupcakes, cocoa bombs, chocolate-dipped Twinkies and more. She’d been working out of her home for years but was looking to expand.

“We were able to provide her with the rebates for her rent, but for the first year I also provided her with quite a bit of restaurant equipment to get her up and running,” Holdiman said — everything from shelving to commercial ovens and refrigeration and a point-of-sale system.

“We learned a lot about how we wanted to see these incubators run and what we wanted to see there.”

POP Culture has recently moved out to its new location in Freetown. That’s part of the function of an incubator — to give entrepreneurs a safe space to try things until they grow bold enough to leave the nest.

Working with entrepreneurship nonprofit E For All, Holdiman has since worked with other business owners like Tiffany Bell of Green Tree Yoga Wellness, a Black-owned yoga studio in Brockton, and Kayanna Scott-Brown of Treetop Tutoring and Coaching in Taunton.

"Right now, I’ve been mentoring the Bun Buds, which have been doing the third Fridays and a lot of the food truck festivals here in Fall River,” he said.

Bun Buds sells jumbo dumplings and footlong hot dogs with an unusual gourmet touch, topped with things like pho sauce, sriracha, potato sticks, and kimchi. They started out as a hot dog cart in Providence’s India Point Park. They’ve now got a roof over their heads: brick-and-mortar space in downtown Fall River.

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Another client he’s working with, Alkemy, produces specialty candy and liquid nitrogen ice cream. Yet another is James Felix Jewelry, Providence-based jewelry designer and manufacturer.

"He’s going to be moving his business showroom here in Fall River, and he’s also going to be doing limited manufacturing of his line here in Fall River as well," Holdiman said.

As an incubator space, Holdiman provides them with about $6,000 a year in credits toward their rent, equipment if they need it, and advice.

"It’s a five-year plan,” he said. “The plan is either in five years they’re ready to move on into some of the other empty storefronts we have downtown ... or once they get to a point where they’re able to make market, and they’d like to still be in that space but pay market rent, I’m able then to take the extra capital that’s coming in and invest in acquiring and developing additional incubator spaces. 

"It’s a win-win-win,” Holdiman said. “We’re able to plan a development at once.” 

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Holdiman said his incubator spaces serve multiple purposes. The small-business owners get a leg up, he fills a storefront with a vibrant new product, and this benefits the community by giving people a reason to come downtown.

“We selected the businesses that go in there because they work with Thyme Blossom and they work with the goals for the neighborhood,” he said. “We’re able to drive how their business develops, how they service our community, and how they add to the community.”

Fall River’s downtown, known in the mid-20th century as a shopping haven, has struggled for decades to rediscover success. Holdiman said he’s heard from business owners who say they can’t open on weekends because there are no customers downtown — he said if there are no customers on weekends, it’s because businesses aren’t open.

“It’s very much, which came first, the chicken or the egg?” he said. “In this case, we know it’s the chicken. Businesses need to be open. Businesses need to be working on programming.”

As a commercial landlord, he requires first-floor tenants to be open six days a week, 55 hours, including weekends — and no blinds in the windows, so their business can look obviously open to anyone passing by.

He said the key to developing downtown is not to create businesses that are one-stop destinations for customers from home and back again, but places where they might linger. “We’re trying to create an environment where people come downtown and they might visit two or three shops,” he said, “where they get to experience the culture that we’re creating downtown.”

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Renovations coming, including a move for Viva Fall River

Holdiman owns the neighboring parking lot at Purchase and Granite streets. He said, with help from the city and MassDevelopment, he’s near the end of a major renovation to convert the stone-faced former bank drive-thru into “a bright and open retail and incubator space." Viva Fall River's maker store will be taking that spot, he said, moving from its South Main Street storefront.

This spot will also include green space that can be used for summer concerts and food truck festivals, with which he’s partnered with Viva Fall River.

"We’re really trying to modernize, and more vitality, and more vibrancy, and more green to downtown," he said.

Part of that vibrancy includes new ideas and fresh flavors from up-and-comers. If he’s getting less than market-rate rent for his space, he said, it’ll be worth it in the long run.

“Having somebody paying some rent in some cases, with the promise of paying more rent in the future, is better than getting no rent and just waiting."

Dan Medeiros can be reached at [email protected]. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Entrepreneur mentor bringing new businesses to downtown Fall River